A saucy one.

Got my first look at The Well-Tempered Clavier yesterday - oh and very tasty it is too. One might almost call the cover "classical", were it not for the fact that the woman in the picture has her leg cocked up over the man's rump. Tom the publisher handed the book over in a restaurant, eyes expectantly on me. I think he was hoping that I was going to burst into tears. Hah! Does he seriously think I'm going to start piping my eye, just because I've got my first book in my hands? He genuinely expected me to go, "My first book! Waaah, waaah," before dissolving into a heap of drooling gunk on the floor. So I scanned the book through. A bizarre feeling I can tell you. And then I very nearly did start weeping - tears of ABSOLUTE RAGE. There'd already been one error in the dedication, which I'd just caught before Tom sent it off the the printers. The book is dedicated to "Margot, my wife". But somehow Tom had managed to leave the "T" off Margot's name. Excruciating. It doesn't bear thinking about. But one thing that DID slip through the net was that he'd manage to leave out a very important person from the Acknowledgements, Paul Hill from Nottingham. How he did it, I just have no idea. "Very sorry," said Tom the publisher. "Just blame me." "I BLOODY WELL WILL BLAME YOU!" I said. "That's OK," he replied. "Whenever I'm landed in the shit, I always blame the author." The bloody nerve of him ...